Kamari_Stupa ‘s Broken Front Tooth Relics: Archaeology, Relic Deposits, Numismatics, Epigraphy, Museum Provenance, and the Tradition-Associated Tooth-Relic Claim HIRR-2026-0031

Kamari 2 is one of the Buddhist stupas excavated south-east of Kabul during the pioneering but methodologically limited antiquarian investigations of 1833. The monument was opened by Johann Martin Honigberger and described in detail by Eugène Jacquet, while Charles Masson supplied drawings and parallel observations. Later scholarship by Gérard Fussman and Elizabeth Errington permits a much clearer reconstruction of the monument, its earlier core stupa, its central stone cell, and the relic deposit. The core deposit is chronologically important because it contained a gold coin of Wima Kadphises, providing a terminus post quem and strongly situating the foundation deposit in the early second century CE. The visible enlarged stupa and associated monastic remains are later. The deposit is also historiographically important because a modern Hswagata case tradition has associated it with a broken front tooth relic. Independent inspection of the principal archaeological reconstruction, however, shows that Errington's Figure 59 enumerates only items 59.1–59.7 and does not include a tooth. The archaeological list records bark, resinous material, gemstones, a cylindrical silver reliquary, the so-called Philosopher's Stone, and a Wima Kadphises gold coin within a larger bronze-basin assemblage. This monograph therefore reaches a bounded conclusion: Kamari 2 preserves a well-documented Buddhist relic-deposit context and an exceptionally useful early Kushan chronological anchor, but the specific broken-front-tooth identification remains unverified in the inspected excavation evidence. The later institutional tooth claim is preserved as a tradition-associated and archival claim requiring an object-level custody bridge and competent material identification. The study also re-examines excavation history, architecture, relic-deposit practice, numismatics, regional Buddhist geography, the dispersal of Honigberger's collection, present documentation gaps, and the ethical distinction between archaeological evidence, sacred attribution, museum custody, and biological identity. Keywords Kamari Stupa; Kamari 2; Bourdj i Kemri; Kabul Valley; Gandhāra; Honigberger; Jacquet; Charles Masson; Wima Kadphises; Kushan; Buddhist reliquary; silver reliquary; relic deposit; tooth relic; archaeological provenance; museum custody; HIRR